Art

Matzo Ball Soup As Art

For the past 8 days many Jews, including my wife and me, have abstained from eating bread as part of our observance of the holiday of Passover. My go-to food during this time of year is the legendary Chicken Matzo Ball Soup.  Actually, this is one of my go-to foods throughout the entire year.  For me, there isn’t a holiday or season where chicken matzo ball soup doesn’t enhance the experience.

I’ve been on a quest for many years in pursuit of the world’s best chicken matzo ball soup.  At least once a month I try out a new recipe or tweak the ingredients of an existing recipe in hopes of taking an already nearly perfect food to the nirvana level.  Chicken Matzo Ball soup is really wonderful medium for artistic expression because it’s simple, yet the balance of the details matters tremendously.  For example, the basic standard ingredients are simple: chicken, broth, matzo balls, carrots, celery, and spices.  From these basic ingredients you have a platform upon which you can build a gastronomical masterpiece.

I experiment with different ways of cooking the chicken. I’m committed to adding ground peppercorns, although they’re missing in some of the recipes.  Ground peppercorns give the soup a bite that brings it alive. Another trick I’ve learned is that I make the matzo balls with olive oil rather than regular vegetable oil because I find that it gives me a lighter and fluffier matzo ball.

I cook by feel.  I add parsley, dill, salt, and ground peppercorns until I sense it’s right.  I let it cook a while. Taste. Add whatever additional spice my instincts tell me to.  It cooks some more. I taste. Tweak the spices. The process repeats itself time and time again. Throughout the entire cooking process, I keep the peppercorn grinder handy and use it liberally.

My lack of measurement and intuitive cooking style results in erratic outcomes that take me to one of two places.  Either my wife says “This is best batch yet”, and I mentally crown myself as worldwide king of chicken matzo ball soup, or she says “this isn’t your best batch” at which point I do my best to hide my sense of failure while desperately trying to figure out where that batch went wrong.

Soup PotEach time I set the empty pot on the stove in preparation for soup-making I receive the gift of possibility.  The majority of my diet consists of remarkably predictable mass-produced restaurant food or prepared food.  The quality is consistent. The taste, predictable.  Unless someone screws up, there are no surprises.  Scratch cooking doesn’t come with guarantees. It leaves open the possibility of greatness, the specter of mediocrity, or worse, culinary disaster.  I find joy in this possibility of creation.  Not all art involves watercolors and easels.  Art exists where we find it, where we express ourselves, and where we allow ourselves to be vulnerable.  We only need to set the scripts and recipes aside.  The rewards of possibility arrive when someone sits at my table.  They take the first spoonful expecting an ordinary bowl of chicken matzo ball soup.  I watch as their eyebrows raise and they smile in response to the flavors passing over their tongue as they recognize an old friend dressed in a fresh set of clothes.  Chicken Matzo Ball soup is no longer the same for them.  It has forever changed. Art happened.

Art Is The Foundation

Last weekend, while visiting in my in-laws in Cleveland, Ohio for Thanksgiving, I was able to visit the Cleveland Museum of Art.  The museum was hosting an exhibition called “Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse”.  The exhibition contained many impressionist paintings, which are always favorites of mine.

Garden PosterFor me, visiting an art museum is a spiritual experience.  As I walk through the galleries, studying the expressions of the artists’ imaginations, it’s as if I am drinking in an elixir that opens my mind and helps me see the world both as it is and as it could be.

I’m at a loss to understand why the arts are relegated to a second place status in our national culture and in our education system.  It often seems to me that many of our leaders regard the arts as a nice frivolity that has no economic value. The logic seems to be that only math and science are needed to compete economically and for innovation.  In my opinion, to regard art as secondary or as a frivolity is profoundly ignorant and absolutely detrimental to society.

Art is foundational to both economic and technological progress.  Exposure to art opens our minds to the possible and gives us a fresh perspective on what already exists.  Art education is where we learn to create, to imagine, and to communicate our innermost thoughts and ideas. Science and math are of little value in the absence of imagination and creativity. Before you can build it, you have to imagine it.

Albert Einstein, often considered the greatest scientist of the 20th century, is quoted as saying:

“The greatest scientists are artists as well.”

Additionally, the arts were so important to Einstein that he is said to have remarked,

“If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician.”

In more recent times, the founders of the two largest technology companies, Microsoft and Apple, both pointed to the importance of art in the development of their companies.  Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, stated:

“I have seen the critical role that the arts play in stimulating creativity and in developing vital communities….the arts have a crucial impact on our economy and are an important catalyst for learning, discovery, and achievement in our country.”

Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, also recognized the importance of the arts when he said:

“It is in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough—it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our heart sing.”

We cannot ignore the value of art in simply improving the quality of life in our communities.  Consider the cultural differences between living in Paris, France, with its many artistic resources and influences, and a less artistic city, such as Jacksonville, Florida.  Paris is legendary, largely because of its artistic richness.

Violinist playing in black background.I am fortunate.  I have the arts in my life.  I had art and music in my elementary school when I was a child.  I have access to great music and just about any book of literature I could ever want to read.  I play guitar, violin, and banjo.  I see theatre and have written and performed a musical play in two Fringe Festivals.  In my life I’ve been able to visit some of the great art museums of the world such as my recent visit to the Cleveland Museum of Art.  I know the impact art has had on my life, but I also know that many people don’t have the arts in their lives. We must make sure that art is in our schools and in our small towns and communities.  Now more than ever, we need the inspiration that art provides us to see our world in new ways and to recognize the potential that surrounds us.  After all, it all begins with the arts.

The Lawyer as Artist

In 1989 Salman Rushdie was quoted in the London Independent as saying:

“A poet’s work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.”

To me this sounds a lot like the work of a lawyer. Is there a connection between artistic creation such as one finds in poetry and the practice law? Can a lawyer be an artist, or are we merely logical thinkers who rarely color outside the lines society draws for us?

When I was a law student attending City University of New York School of Law I lived in Brooklyn. When the long hours of studying law exhausted my energies I would sometimes take the subway into Manhattan, or “the city” as genuine city dwellers call it. Once in there, I would go to the Pastel Society of America where they offered inexpensive classes in pastel painting led by the top pastel painting artists in the United States. I loved these classes and found the process by which these incredible artists created their paintings to be fascinating. Through these classes I began to see that a tree is more than just green and brown, but is really a collection of an endless variety of different colors spanning the entire rainbow. Indeed, the only limit on the colors found in a tree is that created by the artist’s own mind. When I would return from my expedition into the world of art and creativity to the “logical” world of law I noticed that my understanding of the cases and legal principles I was studying seemed to be enhanced. I wasn’t just rejuvenated – I was inspired. It occurred to me that, after the classes, I was seeing law differently, and this led to a continuing curiosity into the intersection between law and art.

I don’t often hear people describing lawyers as artists, but in my mind great lawyers think artistically as well as logically. I love going to art museums, plays, concerts, and reading great writing because, when executed well, they provide me with opportunities to see some aspect of the world from a different perspective. For me, art is fundamental. In my spare time I play and study music. I explore Tallahassee on my bicycle and take photographs. I’ve written and performed a play about economic justice. Even this blog is a creative outlet that allows me to play with ideas. I find that art is at its very best when it takes something that is familiar to me and lets me see it in a totally different way than I’ve ever seen it before.

So it is with law. I believe that a great lawyer or judge doesn’t just see law and justice as words on a page to be blindly followed and applied. Such an approach to the law would leave it forever stagnant and allow injustices to go undiscovered. Great lawyers recognize injustices and create for themselves and others, a constantly refining vision of justice. Consider that for nearly 100 years the law and the courts in the United States steadfastly held onto the rarely challenged notion that racial segregation under the doctrine of “separate but equal” was justice. However, it took visionary lawyers such as Thurgood Marshall to show them a different perspective, that “separate but equal” would never be equal. Such work is as much art as it is logic. The question is how to tell the story such that the injustice of the status quo becomes undeniable.

The primary art form of the lawyer is that of storyteller. Our client’s cases are non-fiction stories that we advocate be viewed from a certain perspective. Our choice of words, the way in which we present evidence, the focus we give to certain facts, and the way in which interpret the law all become part of our storytelling vision. I know that many will read this and think that this idea of “storytelling” is justification for deception and dishonesty, but it’s not that at all. Effective storytelling is truthful. When a story becomes dishonest it loses the ability to fully engage us. Good stories are often messy and even the best cases usually present a challenging fact or two for a lawyer to deal with. It is the lawyer’s ability to weave the messy or difficult parts of the story into a collective whole with a positive truth for the client that I believe distinguishes great creative lawyers from the ordinary.

Many lawyers such as John Grisham, Robert Lewis Stevenson, and Scott Turow have made successful transitions from lawyer to author. In fact, so many lawyers are interested in making the transition from lawyer to author that there actually was a panel called “The Law as a Platform for Writing” at the 2013 annual meeting of the American Bar Association. While I hear many stories of unhappy lawyers, I don’t see the interest in writing as a product of that unhappiness. Instead, I see it as evidence that many lawyers see the art in our profession, and once this is recognized, are compelled to give expression to that art in as many ways possible both in and out of the courtroom.